Published 4:00 am, Thursday, December 14, 2006

2006-12-14 04:00:00 PDT Islamabad, Pakistan -- A judge Wednesday threw out the terrorism charges levied against the man Pakistani officials said was a crucial figure in a plot to bomb airliners flying from London to the United States, the man's lawyer said.

Rashid Rauf, 25, who holds Pakistani and British citizenship, was arrested in August, days after British officials announced that they had broken up the plot with a wave of early-morning raids and arrests in England. The plotters were said to be planning to carry innocent-seeming liquids onto the flights and then combine them to form explosives they could detonate.

Pakistani officials then arrested seven people in connection with the plot, including two with British passports, one of whom was Rauf, the only suspect who was named publicly at that time. They said he had played a key role, and had been in touch with al Qaeda representatives.

But when he appeared Wednesday in an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi, the judge dismissed most of the terrorism charges against him, upholding a defense objection that they lay outside the court's jurisdiction.

Rauf still faces some secondary charges and is still being held by the authorities. Britain has requested his extradition, and Pakistani officials said they are considering the request.

"Rauf was booked under six charges such as impersonation, cheating, forging documents, presenting those forged documents as real and keeping explosives," Hashmat Habib, his lawyer, said Wednesday in a telephone interview.

"When we scrutinized the charges, we were of the opinion that none of the charges fell under the jurisdiction of the anti-terrorism court," Habib said. "The court agreed with our objection, and the terrorism charges have been dropped. So, the outcome of today's hearing is that there are no charges of terrorism against Rashid Rauf anymore."

Rauf is now scheduled to appear before a District and Session Court on Dec. 20 to answer the remaining charges, Habib said.

Accounts differed over just when Rauf was arrested. The Pakistani police said he was taken into custody Aug. 10, the day of the British raids, in Chohan Chowk near the Islamabad airport. But Habib said his client was actually arrested the day before while traveling between Multan and Bahawalpur in Punjab province.

Rauf left Britain in 2002 to settle and marry in Bahawalpur in Punjab province. His wife's family has links with Sunni extremism and sectarian violence, the police said, but he was not a subject of scrutiny before his arrest in August.

British officials said in August that he was wanted in connection with a 2002 murder and have based their extradition request on that case. The two countries have no extradition treaty, so it is up to the Pakistani government's discretion whether to comply.

Details of Rauf's alleged involvement in the terror plot remained sketchy. Habib said the charges were trumped up.

"All the story about the plans of hijacking airplanes was an imaginary allegation, just to boost the graph of Bush and Blair," Habib said.